4 ms·
Conway's meditations on life are beautiful, "You know in my early twenties, let's say, people always thought that I would, you know, be a great mathematician.
by areoform 7y ago
Conway's meditations on life are beautiful,
"You know in my early twenties, let's say, people always thought that I would, you know, be a great mathematician. And be good at various things and so on. And in my late twenties, I hadn't achieved any of the things that people were predicting, and so I call it my black period. I started to wonder you know whether it was all nonsense. Whether I was not a good mathematician after all and so on, and then I made a certain discovery and was shot into international prominence.
As a mathematician when you become a prominent mathematician, in that sense, it doesn't mean that many people know your name. It means that many mathematicians know your name, and there aren't many mathematicians in the world anyway, you know. So it doesn't count very much, but it suddenly released me from feeling that I had to live up to my promise.
You know, I had lived up to my promise. I sort of made a vow to myself. It was so nice not worrying anymore that I thought I'm not going to worry anymore ever again, I was going to study whatever I thought was interesting and not worry whether this was serious enough. And most of the time I've kept to that."
Life, Death and the Monster (John Conway) - Numberphile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOCe5HUObD4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOCe5HUObD4
I take great solace from these words.
- physicles 7y agoI think a lot of us here will recognize this as the exact same sentiment that Feynman expressed pretty early in his career. It seems that while some great people got there by being hell-bent on greatness from early on (Schwarzenegger comes to mind), for others it’s ironically the release of that pressure that unlocks the capacity for greatness.
- dbmueller 7y agoTo me, the question that springs to mind then is: does that kind of attitude work as well for “lesser” mathematicians/people? (I'm not sure it does)
- tehwalrus 7y agoThey may not become famous in their fields, but they're not going to be worrying about that stuff anyway, so will probably be happier. Which, it turned out for me, was a better goal all along.
- dbmueller 7y agoIt's not necessarily about becoming famous. If you're good enough, you can just work on what you enjoy doing, and it will probably yield something research worthy anyway, and your bosses will be happy, etc. Otherwise, you might end up simply having fun on dead-end stuff, which are harder to sell, academically. But that's just my impression… mind sharing your story?
- BeetleB 7y ago> To me, the question that springs to mind then is: does that kind of attitude work as well for “lesser” mathematicians/people? My grades shot upwards when I stopped caring about them and decided to focus on what interested me (i.e. I like subject X and want to learn it well and will not use the grade as a metric of how well I learned it).
- bigj0n 7y agoWhat does 'work' mean? If work means to live a happy and meaningful life- absolutely. If work means to gain the prestige of a man like Conway- probably not. But I can rest assured that I likely wouldnt achieve that with other attitudes either
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Swizec 7y agoThat hits so close to home it’s comical. At 15 I said ”Welp, not gonna be a music prodigy, that’s okay” At 25 I was like ”Damn, not a comp sci prodigy either that sucks” Then at 30 it was ”Well crap, anything I achieve now will just be considered normal” Pressure is still there but it feels lessened. I’m not gonna be famous for achieving great things before the curve. But I can still gain notoriety for doing cool things at a normal pace. The key is to let the ego motivate but not crush you, I guess.